


Woltober

by yggsassil



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Au Ra Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Au Ra Xaela Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Not Beta Read, Rating May Change, Tags May Change, Warnings May Change, literally everything will change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26986990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yggsassil/pseuds/yggsassil
Summary: “If you could have any wish granted,” Emet-Selch drawls abruptly, startling her; she glances over to where he is watching the denizens of Eulmore work to create a great Talos of unfathomable proportions, “what would you wish for?”Haphazard fills for the #Woltober prompts.
Relationships: Azem/Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch, Haurchefant Greystone/Warrior of Light, Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light, Warrior of Light/Estinien Wyrmblood
Kudos: 16





	1. Wish

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote a bunch of these while waiting for housing (savage) to begin. ask me later whether i cleared or wiped.

“If you could have any wish granted,” Emet-Selch drawls abruptly, startling her; she glances over to where he is watching the denizens of Eulmore work to create a great Talos of unfathomable proportions, “what would you wish for?”

She tilts her head, pondering. She isn’t really sure what she’d want. Maybe before, she would’ve…

“If you had asked me that a year ago, I would’ve wished for Haurchefant back.”

Emet-Selch turns slightly to her, one eyebrow raised. “Do tell.”

She bites her lip, smearing her lipstick in her concentration. “He...died protecting me. For no reason, really. And I couldn’t save him.”

Emet-Selch turns fully to face her, interest piqued. “Your healing magics could not save him?” He had seen how potent her healing was.

She shakes her head. “It was a fatal blow. I can heal wounds, sure, but an aetherial lance to the heart...there was no saving him.” She looks away from the crowd of workers, focusing on the ground in thought.

Emet-Selch is quiet, stewing over her words. Carefully, he asks, “did you love him?”

The Warrior of Light frowns. It’s a question she’d asked herself before too—he was the first (and to date only) man she had lain with, and always been a true friend, but… “I think...if he had lived, I would have loved him. I already loved him as a dear friend, but if he had survived I could have loved him as...something more.”

“Yet only a year after you have moved on,” Emet comments with a note of derision.

The Warrior of Light lets out a bark of laughter. “Not without quite a few mental breakdowns. Ghosts of the past, hallucinations, anger and grief made form.” Emet-Selch raises his eyebrows in surprise and the Warrior of Light shakes it away. “I wouldn’t say I’ve moved on, either, more that I’ve...accepted it. I can’t undo death.”

Emet-Selch is quiet then. He looks away from her back to the crowd; the mi’qote woman is cheering for her weak-willed husband, who is cowering in fear.

“What if you could undo death?” He says quietly. “What if there were a way?”

She glances at the Ascian, then glances away. “I...don’t know what I’d do. I really don’t.”

Emet-Selch says nothing.


	2. Pulse/Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Not going to join them, hero?” Comes a sardonic drawl from behind you.

“Not going to join them, hero?” Comes a sardonic drawl from behind you. You glance over your shoulder for the source of the snark—Emet-Selch, of course. You roll your eyes and elect to ignore him, instead turning back toward the empty, dark Rak’tika Greatwood. He hums, considering, and slowly approaches you from behind, leaves crunching under his boots. He pauses there, fulms behind you, as if he is waiting.

He’s an Ascian, after all. He is patient.

You purse your lips together. It had been difficult enough to explain to the Scions--Ardbert even moreso. When you had told him, he looked at you with those incredibly sad brown eyes of his, like a kicked coeurl. But it is (was) different with him. His companions, the Warriors of Darkness, close-knit unlike any other. All of them a Warrior.

All of them with the Echo.

But the Scions--you are alone.

“It’s not for me,” you start. Still Emet-Selch hovers behind you, waiting. “it’s because the night sky has been returned. A lightwarden defeated.”

Emet-Selch hums again. He approaches you from the side; you glance over to him, seeing hi regarding said night sky with keen interest. “All acts which you, and no one else, could have done.” He glances over at you; you shrug your shoulders.

“I’m just a tool. Nothing more.”

He looks fully over at you, his expression unreadable. He stares at you, expression neutral, before he says, “you sell yourself short, hero.” He doesn’t wait for your surprised response, instead ignoring you, disappearing slowly into the thick canopied trees of the Rak’tika Greatwood.


	3. Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She wears a large blue flower in her hair.

She wears a large blue flower in her hair.

A blue brightlily, she calls it, smiling. Blue like her--like her skin, her hair, her scales, her eyes which glow and glimmer.

Blue is an unnatural color. Nothing in nature is blue--it is artificial, engineered. It goes against nature.

Just as the shattered remains of her soul are. She is not a whole person, but fragments of one--fragments even with his sight he cannot piece together. Her soul is hidden from him beneath the ever-mounting Light contained with her, encroaching and breaking and poisoning it slowly.

She is unnatural. She is not meant to be.

But when he sees it--finally,  _ finally, _ he glimpses the old familiar radiance of her soul--he remembers.

She is also beautiful. His beautiful Azem.


	4. Enouement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You aren’t the child the shades mistake you for, are you?” A voice echoes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter fucked me up _hard_

“You aren’t the child the shades mistake you for, are you?” A voice echoes out. You jolt in place, surprised and alarmed by the voice that is definitely addressing you--it is not Hythlodaeus, but how you are able to distinguish the song of Hythlodaeus’ voice from all the other shades is something for later. You glance around for the source of the voice, but with all the identical cloaks and identical masks, it is difficult to pinpoint who is addressing you.

“Behind you,” the voice sings to you again; this time, there is a note of teasing to it. You turn around--yet another shade watching you. But they are more lively than the other shades, perhaps even moreso than Hythlodaeus is (was?). You cannot see their face beneath their hood, but you can sense their amusement at you. “Come now, sit beside me.” They wave a hand over to the space beside them on the massive bench; a series of elegant stairs appears out of thin air so that you may traverse up the bench without having to climb like a monkey over them. You flop down beside them and, yet again, are awed by the massive size difference of the Amaurotines and your own Sundered self.

The Amaurotine tilts their head at you; beneath their hood you glimpse a dark-colored mask, unlike that of both the Ascians and the other Amaurotines. You open your mouth to ask them why theirs is different but, for some reason, finding yourself closing it again, discarding the question.

The Amaurotine stares at you for some more time (or so you assume; it’s difficult to see anything underneath the robes and masks the shades wear) before they ask abruptly, “what is your name?”

Instinctively you tell them: Cirina. Cirina Malqir. You pause before appending: Warrior of Light,

The Amaurotine leans forward and knits their fingers together. “Servant of Hydaelyn,” they say quietly, neutrally. You aren’t quite sure if you like being called Her servant, but considering the fact that Hydaelyn is a  _ primal, _ it is entirely possible you, in fact, actually are her servant. 

Hesitantly you nod in agreement. The shade says nothing, still watching you. You fidget in place, looking away, pulling at the ruffles of your dress. The Amaurotine sighs and you look back at them; they are gazing intently at the chronometer on the wall (forever frozen in time, you notice).

“I was against it. The sacrifice of life to save this star--and the sacrifice of life to stop Zodiark. It drove a wedge between Hades and I.” You tilt your head in confusion. “Emet-Selch. Before the Fall...he was my husband. I loved him quite dearly.” Your breath freezes in your throat; there is a strange trickle of cold going down your neck, as if you are on the brink of remembering--it is gone the next moment. You shake it off.

The Amaurotine--Emet-Selch’s spouse--sighs. “He’s looking for me, you know. He has been for so long. Eons and eons searching for me.” They sigh and shrug their shoulders; you feel a deep ache in your chest of sympathy for Emet-Selch, and for the Amaurotine. “But what he fails to realize is that I have been beside him…” and here you can  _ see _ the Amaurotine glancing over at you, can see their striking,  _ familiar _ , so terrifyingly familiar eyes looking at you, “all along.”

Your breath freezes in your throat. The Amaurotine--Azem--smiles at you and whispers, barely perceptible,

_ please free him, my future self. _


	5. Seasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Warior of Light does not deal with cold very well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some fluff(?) after the pain that past chapter was. besides prompt 12 this is all the ones i have currently written rn

The Warior of Light does not deal with cold very well.

“Sweet  _ fuck _ who let an entire country be this cold,” she hisses through her teeth. She crosses her arms over her chest, shoving them over her breasts and under her thin silk yukata. “I feel like I’m going to  _ freeze to death.” _ She snarls and huddles down to the snowy ground.

The crunch of Estinien’s greaves on the snow echoes behind her, and she hears his snort of derision. “I believe you could blame Bahamut for the cold. And one would think the Warrior of Light herself would be more prepared for different temperatures. Or have you truly never seen  _ snow _ before?”

“No, I haven’t!” She snaps back; she whips her head around to yell at him but crouching in high heels in cold snow is generally a bad idea and she begins to tip over. “Oh  _ shit!” _ she yelps right before she faceplants into the snow.

Cirina lets out an aggravated scream into the snow.

Estinien sighs even louder and reaches down to pull her up off the ground--as an Au Ra she is  _ incredibly _ small--and blushes and glances away when he gets an eyeful of her breasts. He coughs awkwardly and deposits her down, where she begins to huddle again..

“I’m a xaela, you twit. We don’t  _ get  _ snow. I don’t even—” she splutters as if she is trying to find the words, a stream of curses and unknown syllables filtering through, “I can’t make...my own heat.”

Estinien raises an eyebrow. “Truly.” She nods. He frowns, glancing toward the Jeweled Crozier, contemplating, before reaching out and grabbing one of her arms and dragging her behind him. “Come with me.”

“W-wait! What in the light of Azi—”

_ “You _ are going to buy warmer clothes. I will not have the Warrior of Light succumbing to a mere  _ cold _ in our fight against Nidhogg.”

He doesn’t hear her mumbled, “I can always just use a fire spell to keep me warm…”


End file.
